Pentecost Alley (51 page)

Ewart hesitated. “She’s lying,” he said after a moment.

“And Augustus FitzJames says he’s never heard of her, either,” Pitt went on.

Ewart said nothing. He drew in his breath, and then let it out again silently.

“Was there anything at the scene of the first murder to incriminate Finlay?” Pitt asked curtly.

Ewart looked straight back at him. “No, of course not. If there had been I’d have mentioned it. That would have been relevant. We never had any idea who did it. There was nothing to go on … nothing at all.”

“I see.”

But Pitt did not see. He traveled from Whitechapel back to the center of the City, and went straight to Cornwallis’s office.

Cornwallis welcomed him, striding forwards with his hand out, his face alight.

“Well done, Pitt. This is brilliant! I admit, I had lost hope we should have such a satisfactory outcome—and a
confession, to boot.” He dropped his hand, suddenly realizing something was wrong. The smile faded from his lips. His eyes clouded. “What is it, man? What now? Sit! Sit down.” He gestured to one of the large, leather-covered easy chairs, and sat in the other himself. He leaned forwards, his face grave, his attention total.

Pitt told him about the crime in Mile End.

Cornwallis was stunned. “And Ewart has only just told you? That’s beyond belief!”

Pitt could think of no easy way to recount what had actually happened without implicating Charlotte, and this was not a time for lies or evasions of any sort.

“Ewart didn’t tell me at all,” he said grimly. “My wife discovered it, and she told me.” He noticed the look on Cornwallis’s face, but perhaps Vespasia had made some reference or other, because he did not question what Pitt said.

“But you have spoken to Ewart?” he affirmed, his eyes dark with foreboding.

“Yes,” Pitt replied. “He said he didn’t mention it because he thought it irrelevant.”

“That is inconceivable.” Cornwallis was very earnest, his whole face filled with distress. “And Lennox was involved as well?”

“Yes. Although that is easier to understand. He may well have assumed Ewart had told me. It was Ewart’s job, not his.”

“But why?” Cornwallis said with exasperation. “I can’t begin to understand it! Why would Ewart hide that first murder?” His hands were clenched, fidgeting. “All right, he failed to solve it, but that’s no shame to him. From what you say, there were no clues to follow. The witnesses saw nothing of value. There was nothing further he could have done. Pitt …” He looked wretched, hardly able to bring himself to say what he meant.

“I don’t know,” Pitt replied to the question that had not been asked. “I can’t believe Ewart was involved in a murder, let alone three. But I have to know. I’m going
back to the original witnesses to the Mile End case. I know their names and the address where it happened. But it’s not my station, and it’s not my crime. I need your permission to question Inspector Forrest about Ewart’s duties that night.”

Cornwallis’s face was tight with pain. He had been in command too many years not to know the weaknesses and the fallibilities of man, that courage and temptation can work side by side, and loyalty and self-deceit.

“You have it,” he said quietly. “We must know. Go back to the first murder, Pitt. I can’t believe Ewart is guilty himself. He certainly wasn’t of the second or third, we know that. But if Ella Baker didn’t do it, then for God’s sake, who did?” He frowned. “Do you believe it is really credible that we have three extraordinary murders, all with the same features of torture and fetishism, the cross-buttoned boots, the water, committed by three different people?”

“It looks like it,” Pitt replied. “But no, I don’t believe it. It’s preposterous. There is something fundamental that we don’t yet know, and I have no idea what it is.” He stood up.

Cornwallis rose also and went to his desk, writing Pitt a brief note of permission. He gave it to Pitt wordlessly, gripping his hard hand, his own body stiff. He held Pitt’s eyes, wanting to speak, to communicate some of the emotion he felt, but there was nothing to say. He took a deep breath, hesitated, then let it out again.

Pitt nodded, then turned and left, going out into the sharp October air to hail a hansom and return once again to Mile End. It was four o’clock in the afternoon.

By quarter past five he had seen the duty rosters for the day of Mary Smith’s death. There was no way in which Ewart could have been involved in her murder, just as he could not have been involved in the murders of Ada McKinley and Nora Gough.

Next he left and went to the house in Globe Road where Mary Smith had died. He asked the grayly
unshaven landlord for the first witness named in the statements.

“Is Mr. Oliver Stubbs here?”

“Never ’eard of ’im,” the landlord said abruptly. “Try somew’ere else.” He was about to close the door on Pitt when Pitt put his foot in it and glared at him with such ferocity he hesitated.

“ ’Ere, wos’ matter wiv you, then? Get yer foot outer me door or I’ll set the dog on yer!”

“Do that and I’ll close you down,” Pitt said without hesitation. “This is a murder enquiry, and if you want to avoid the rope as an accomplice, you’ll do all you can to help me. Now, if Oliver Stubbs isn’t here, where is he?”

“I dunno!” The man’s voice rose indignantly. “ ’E scarpered two years gorn. But ’e never done no murder as I knows of.”

“Mary Smith,” Pitt said tersely.

“ ’Oo?” The man’s eyes widened. “C’mon! D’yer know how many Mary Smiths there are ’rahnd ’ere? Every tart wot tries ’er hand is Mary Smith.”

“Not all of them end up tortured, strangled and tied to a bed,” Pitt grated between his teeth.

“Geez! That Mary Smith.” The man paled under his stubble beard. “Bit late, aren’t yer? That were six, seven years gorn.”

“Six. I need to see the original witnesses. Get in my way and I’ll find something to arrest you for.”

The man turned away and yelled into the dim passageway behind him. “ ’Ere! Marge! Come ’ere!”

There was no reply.

“Come ’ere, yer lazy sow!” He raised his voice even more.

There was another moment’s silence, then a fat woman with ginger hair emerged from one of the back rooms and came forward.

“Yeah? Wot yer want?” She looked at Pitt with minimum curiosity.

“Weren’t yer ’ere six years ago?” the man asked her.

“Yeah,” she answered. “So?”

“This rozzer wants ter talk to yer. An’ be nice to ’im, Marge, or ’e’ll do the lot of us.”

“Fer wot?” she said with a sneer. “I in’t done nuffink agin the law.”

“I don’t care,” the man replied, coughing hoarsely. “Jus’ tell ’im, yer stupid mare. Yer was ’ere. Tell ’im!”

“Are you Margery Williams?” Pitt asked her.

“Yeah.”

“You were one of the witnesses the police spoke to about the murder of Mary Smith six years ago?”

She looked uncomfortable, but her eyes did not waver. “Yeah. I told ’em everythin’ I know. Wot yer want ter know fer now? Yer sure as ’ell in’t gonna catch him.”

“You said ‘him.’” He looked at her closely. “Are you taking it for granted it was a man who killed her, or could it have been a woman?”

Contempt filled her face. “Wot kind o’ woman does that ter ’nother woman? Geez, where do you come from, mister? Course it were a man! Din’t yer look at wot I said? They wrote it all down on their little bits o’ paper. Always scribblin’, they was.”

The man stood beside her, looking from her to Pitt and back again.

“They can’t have kept it,” Pitt said, realizing with surprise how much must have been thrown away once it was regarded as of no use, and the case marked “unsolved” and forgotten. “Tell me what you can remember of the man you saw, and with as much detail as possible.”

“Wot in ’ell do it matter now?” She screwed up her face, eyeing him with suspicion and curiosity. “Yer never sayin’ yer got someone, ’ave yer? After all them years?” She hesitated another moment, deep in thought. “ ’Ere! You sayin’ as it were the same one wot done Mary Smith as done the other women in Whitechapel?”

For a moment it seemed such a glaringly obvious conclusion Pitt wondered at the woman’s stupidity. Then he remembered with a jolt that the details of this first death
had not been published in the newspapers. If she had not seen the body herself, and the police, specifically Ewart, had not told her, then maybe she was unaware of the exact sameness of the method, even to the most bizarre detail.

“Yes,” he said simply. “It is possible.”

“I ’eard as it was a woman wot done ’em. In’t that true then?” She swung around to the unshaven man. “That Davey Watson’s a liar! ’E said as it were another tart wot done ’em. Wait till I catch ’im, the bleedin’ little sod!”

“It was a woman who killed Nora Gough,” Pitt said soothingly. “Now please describe this man for me as closely as you can remember, but don’t add anything or leave anything out. Please.”

“Right.” She shrugged heavy shoulders. “There were four of ’em. All come together. One were dark an’ kind o’ fancy, arty-lookin’, nothin’ special abaht ’is face as I can remember. Jus’ ordinary, ’cept ’e fancied ’isself or summink. Painter, mebbe!”

There was a clatter somewhere inside the building. A woman swore.

“The second man?” Pitt prompted.

“Pompous as a prater, ’e were, all airs like ’e thought ’e were summink.”

“What did he look like?” Urgency was mounting inside him.

“Nuffin’ much. Orn’ry as muck, w’en it comes ter it.” She stared at him, trying to work out why he cared so much his voice was cracking. “Wouldn’t know him agin if he walked in be’ind yer.”

“And the third?” he pressed.

“ ’Nother self-satisfied sod wot thinks ’e runs the world,” she answered. “ ’Andsome, though. ’Andsome face, lov’ly ’air, all thick an’ waves. Would o’ done a woman good, that ’air.”

“Fair or dark?” Pitt felt a curious sensation of anticipation as he said it, a clenching in his stomach. Ewart had
known all this. He had heard this six years ago. What terror or stupidity had kept him silent?

“Fair,” she said without hesitation.

“A gentleman?”

“Yeah, if talk an’ clothes makes a gent, then ’e was a gent. I wouldn’t ’a’ give yer tuppence fer ’im. Nasty little swine. Summit mean abaht ’im, sort o’ … excited, like ’e were … I dunno.” She gave up.

“And the last one?” Pitt did not want to know, but he had to, there was no evading it. “Can you remember him?”

“Yeah. ’E really were diff’rent.” She shook her head a little, the ginger hair waggling from side to side. “On the thin side, but wi’ one o’ them faces as yer never forgets. Eyes like ’e were on fire. Inside ’is ’ead …”

“You mean a little mad? Or drunk? What?”

“No.” She waved a fat hand impatiently. “Like ’e knew sommat inside ’isself wot were so important ’e ’ad to tell everyone. Like ’e were a poet, or one o’ them musicians, or summink. ’E din’t belong wi’ them lot.”

“I see. And what happened? Are you saying they came together, or one by one, or how?” He asked even though he knew the answer.

“All come together,” she replied. “Then all went ter different rooms. All went orff tergether arter. Close, they was. White as paper. Thought they was sick drunk, till I knew wot they done … or wot one o’ them done. Reckon as they all knew abaht it, though.”

“I see. And do you know which one went in to Mary Smith?”

“Yeah.” She nodded. “They all started tergether wif ’er. Then the one wi’ the ’air stayed wif ’er. Then they all went back agin. I dunno which one o’ them killed ’er, but I’d lay me money it were the one wi’ the ’air. ’E ’ad a look in ’is eyes.”

“I see.” Pitt felt numb, a little sick. “Thank you, Mrs. Williams. Would you testify to that, if necessary?”

“Wot, in a court?”

“Yes.”

She thought about it for a moment. She did not consult the man, who stood by sullenly, unimportant.

“Yeah,” she said at last. “Yeah, if yer wants. Poor Mary. She din’ deserve that. None o’ my girls ever did, nor anybody else’s neither. I’ll see the bastard ’ang, if yer can get ’im, that is!” She gave a harsh, derisive laugh. “That all, mister?”

“Yes, for now. Thank you.”

Pitt walked away slowly. It was now nearly six in the evening, and growing dark with the heavy clouds moving in from the east, a sharper wind behind them, smelling of the river, salt and dead fish and human effort.

There was no evasion possible. Margery Williams had described the four young men too precisely for there to be any but the faintest doubt, driven by hope, not reason. It had been the Hellfire Club: Thirlstone, Helliwell, Finlay and Jago Jones. Pitt was crushed by an inner misery. He walked slowly away from Mile End and towards Whitechapel. It would take him half an hour to reach Coke Street. He wished it could be longer.

He was passed by all sorts of people on their way home from offices: clerks with ink-stained fingers and stiff shoulders, some with squinting eyes after staring all day at the black letters on the white page. Shop clerks passed in twos and threes. Laborers would be finishing soon, going home to the piled tenements, each having their own narrow little place where their own people were, their own few belongings.

He crossed the street and only just avoided being struck by a hansom. It was getting dark, and considerably colder.

He turned his coat collar up and increased his pace without being aware of it. He did not intend to get there any faster; he was drawn by emotion, an anger and urgency within.

He was going straight down the Mile End Road, which would become the Whitechapel Road as it crossed Brady
Street. From reluctance he had changed to wanting to get it over with as quickly as possible. He was striding along, barely seeing people on either side. The streetlamps were lit. Orange lights were brilliant through the gathering darkness, carriages mere looming shapes with riding lamps on either side, horses’ hooves clattering on the wet stones, wheels hissing.

He turned left down Plumbers Row, which led into Coke Street. It was the one time and place he was almost sure of finding Jago Jones, and he had a deep, perhaps irrational belief that Jago would not lie to him if he was faced with the truth.

He swung around the last corner and saw the cart under the gas lamp, the light shining on its handles, polished smooth where hands had gripped it day after day perhaps for generations. Jago Jones’s lean figure in his shabby clothes was still serving hot soup to the last ragged figures. Beside him, working in silent unison, was Tallulah FitzJames.